Haiti says US missionaries could face kidnapping charges

A group of American Baptists who tried to take 33 Haitian "orphans" out of the country without permission faced charges of kidnapping on Monday as it emerged that most of the children have living family members.

The American missionaries have been accused of trying to abduct the children without government permission or the correct papersPhoto: REUTERS

By Tom Leonard in New York

7:38PM GMT 01 Feb 2010

The five men and five women, working for an Idaho-based charity called New Life Children's Refuge, have been accused of trying to abduct the children - aged between two months and 12 years - without government permission or the correct papers.

Many Haitian officials were quick to call for the missionaries to be charged as kidnappers, but the country's justice minister and a lawyer for the Americans said there was a possibility that they could be returned to the US, perhaps to face justice there. With Haiti's government in shambles following the devastating Jan 12 earthquake, it was unknown whether the country's judicial system could handle the high-profile case.

The status of Haiti's hundreds of thousands of orphans is complicated by the fact that many have living parents or families who have abandoned them because they cannot care for them.

It emerged on Monday that 21 of the 33 removed children by the Americans came from a small mountain village and had been willingly given up by parents and relatives, who had been told the children would be given good care, a proper education and even their own swimming pool.

Backed by church leaders, the 10 - arrested on the Dominican Republic border on Friday - insist they were not involved in child trafficking but had simply been trying to bring the children to a hotel on the north Dominican Republic coast, which was being set up as an orphanage by two congregation members, Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter, who are among those being held.

Miss Silsby admitted the children had not had the correct paperwork, including passports or permission to leave from the Haitian government, but insisted she had not believed it would be an issue. She claimed she was "just trying to do the right thing".

Miss Silsby set up New Life Children's Refuge in November last year and had planned to build an orphanage, church and school on the northern Dominican coast, as well as villas where American couples could stay while they waited to adopt children.

After the earthquake shattered Port-au-Prince, the group said it changed its mission to "rescue Haitians abandoned on the streets, makeshift hospitals or from collapsed orphanages".

They planned to take up to 100 children by bus to the neighbouring Caribbean country. Miss Silsby insisted all the children came from a reputable Haitian orphanage.

But according to staff at an Austrian-run orphanage where the children are now staying outside Port-au-Prince, some complained they had not wanted to leave Haiti and had believed they were going to boarding school or holiday camp.

Marie-Laurence Jocelin Lassegue, Haiti's communications minister, said: "There can be no question of taking our children off the streets and out of the country. They will be judged...that's what is important."